How much can chemicals hurt us?

I am often asked how chemicals in our everyday products can hurt us and affect our health. To answer this, you have to consider a few things.

• All chemicals require a material safety data sheet (MSDS) for transportation purposes. The MSDS determine how much of the product is required to cause a reaction to anyone that comes into contact with that chemical. The product can cause the effects via inhalation, coming into contact with skin or eyes, by entering a water source, and many other ways. Often times, a breathing apparatus is suggested, or chemical resistant gloves/suit, or goggles to protect the person handling the product from any contact with the chemical.

• All products are absorbed by our skin and inhaled during breathing, which is why a person that is highly allergic to peanuts can go into anaphylactic shock by merely breathing in the dust from one or a handful of peanuts and why people allergic to latex must use latex free gloves.

So now we move onto the next question I get, which is "but I don't use that many chemicals in any given day". Really? Let's look at some of the products a person uses in any given day. On average, a person gets up, takes a shower/bath, washes their hair, brushes their teeth, washes their face, applies a moisturizer, uses some kind of hair care product to keep their style in place, uses deodorant (or worse, an antiperspirant) and may apply make-up, and cologne or perfume. That means you use a soap or bath gel, shampoo and conditioner, toothpaste, facial wash and possibly astringent, moisturizer, hairspray/hair gel/wax, deodorant/antiperspirant, make-up (base, powder, blush, eye liner, eye shadow, mascara, and lipstick or lip gloss), and your perfume or cologne. You haven't even made it out of the bathroom, yet!

Read the label on each of those products. Can you pronounce even half of the names of the chemicals you are using in those products? Do you feel like you're having to go back to your science class days just to try to figure out how to pronounce them? Chances are, unless you just finished a science class, you won't even recognize some of those names, because we are constantly adding chemicals to our world every day.

Now, going back to your science class days, what is the other thing you learned about in science class, regarding safety? Yes, that's right, you have to be careful as to which chemicals you mix together, because you never know what kind of reaction you are going to get by mixing chemicals at random.

Think about it; you are putting hundreds upon hundreds of chemicals on your body each day, and you don't know if any of them can have a chemical reaction with one another.

So are you willing to make your daily cleansing routine a science project with potential hazardous chemical reactions? Why take the risk!

Read the labels, quit buying chemicals, and put your mind at ease!

To your health!

Joyce